BRITAIN'S SAFETY-FOCUSED FLEETS URGED TO SIGN THE 'PLEDGE' BY CAMPAIGNERS

Britain’s safety-focused fleets are being urged to follow the lead of RoadSafe and the ‘Driving for Better Business’ campaign and sign the ‘Pledge’ - the Health and Safety Executive’s online forum to promote risk management.

RoadSafe’s mission is to reduce road deaths and injuries through building partnerships between the motor industry and related companies, traffic engineers, the police and road safety professionals, promoting the safe design and use of vehicles and roads and encouraging education and innovation.

The charity delivers the Government-backed ‘Driving for Better Business’ campaign, which is aimed at raising awareness of the importance of work-related road safety, in the business community and public sector by using ‘business champions’ drawn from these communities to promote the business benefits of managing it effectively.

So far almost 40 public and private sector organisations have become ‘business champions’ and are used by the campaign to promote the financial, legal and moral reasons across for industry and commerce to invest in at-work driving safety.

With an estimated 200 road deaths and serious injuries a week resulting from crashes involving at work drivers, and more employees killed and seriously injured on Britain’s roads while driving on behalf of their employer than in any other work-related activity, the campaign aims to cut the carnage.

Michael Parish, Programme Consultant for the ‘Driving for Better Business’ campaign, said: “We believe that it is right to encourage business leaders to see health and safety as core elements of their management processes and to draw attention to the importance of leadership and proportionate risk management in driving for work.”

RoadSafe joins more than 1,000 other organisations which have so far signed the HSE Strategy Pledge and has added it's own case study to the HSE Pledge Forum. Among the organisations that have so far signed the ‘Pledge’ are ‘business champion’ fleets: Atkins, Balfour Beatty, BT, Centrica, Chamberlain Doors, General Motors, Royal Mail Group and Scottish and Southern Energy.

Mr Parish said: “We are delighted that some of our ‘business champions’ have already signed up to the ‘Pledge’ and would encourage all of our ‘business champions’ as well as other members of the ‘Driving for Better Business’ and RoadSafe networks to sign up as a clear demonstration of their commitment to effective H&S managment as shown in their focus on occupational road risk management. Good health and safety is good business.”

As well as signing the HSE Strategy Pledge, ‘Business Champion’ fleets can also add details of their health and safety programmes and any achievements to the special ‘Pledge’ website.

Caroline Turner, Director of the Driving for Better Business campaign also endorsed the Pledge website by saying: “By getting involved our ‘business champions’ can share their ideas and further promote best practice to other organisations and help improve work related health and safety as a whole, building on the good work already being done and remove death and injury from the workplace.”

In launching the Pledge Forum, Kevin Myers, the HSE’s deputy chief executive, said: “HSE has been running a number of specialist online communities very successfully for sometime. This new community, the Pledge Forum, is a particularly exciting prospect. We hope that in time Forum will become a space where best practice in health and safety is exchanged.

“If an idea about making people safer or healthier - potentially saving lives - is a good one and it can be replicated in other businesses, we should do everything we can to help that idea to spread. The Pledge Forum is intended to do just that.”

Businesses which sign the Pledge:
• Agree to play their part in reducing the numbers of work-related deaths, injuries and ill-health in Great Britain.
• Put health and safety at the heart of what they do and to take a common sense approach to health and safety.
• Commit to debunking myths around health and safety that trivialise the impact of injuries, ill health and deaths on individuals and their families.
• Recognise the importance of health and safety in difficult economic times and the dangers of complacency.
• Pledge to work with the Health and Safety Executive and its partners to Be Part of the Solution.